Graphic software applications provide users with mark-making tools for drawing marks on a digital canvas. Many mark-making tools simulate the look of traditional artistic media, such as chalks, brushes and ink. A traditional graphic software application uses an internal mark-making tool engine to provide predefined mark-making tools which provide marks of predefined fixed appearances. The number of those predefined mark-making tools that an application can provide is limited and some sophisticated users want to use more different mark-making tools.
In order to respond to the demand of those sophisticated users, some graphic software applications use more sophisticated pixel pipeline mark-making tools that have numerous adjustments or parameters for dynamically altering the appearance of marks made on the digital canvas. A typical example of this type of tools is a pressure-sensitive pen and tablet. The characteristics of a mark-making tool are dynamically altered as the tool is applied by the user. The dynamical alteration of the appearance is suitable for some marking, but it is still restricted to the dynamical alteration of existing mark-making tools and does not provide new mark-making tools.
Some graphic applications allow mutation of existing mark-making tools to create new mark-making tools. Mutation is variation of characteristics of an existing mark-making tool. Most existing mutation techniques rely on a randomized computation. The mutations of an existing mark-making tool are randomly chosen and displayed for the user to utilize. These randomized computations of mutations typically have the ability to control the severity of the randomized selections. For example, some graphic application use Kai's Power Tools (KPT) filters that use a genetic mutation approach. This approach allows the user to see a set of random variations surrounding the current selection. Clicking on a variation moves it to the current selection and updates the surrounding random variations to a new set. A strength adjuster is used to adjust how radical the variations are. The higher the setting, the more extra the variations. While this randomized mutation techniques allow creation of new mark-making tools by selecting from given random variations, they do not allow for the ability to control the direction of the randomization. The surrounding variations are always random regardless which variation is the current selection. While these randomized computation techniques allow for a random mutation of any given mark-making tool, they do not allow for specific control over the way it will mutate or control over the type of traits the new mark-making tool will take on. Such control would be valuable when attempting to create a specific type of mark-making tool.
In order to express a broad range of various marks, another solution used in an existing sophisticated graphic application is to use a large set of adjustable controls to allow users to adjust settings of controls to create new mark-making tools. Because of the complex interaction of all of these controls, typically a long learning curve is required for the users to become proficient in the creation of new or modified mark-making tools.
The primary technique to shield the users from this long learning curve has been to provide the users with “presets”. A preset is an encapsulation of all unique control settings of a mark-making tool that combine to produce a specific mark-making result. Some sophisticated graphic applications supply hundreds of these presets. The user can simply select an existing preset to reconfigure the control array of the mark-making tool engine of the application to behave according to the preset. Presets often use naming conventions that associate them with traditional expressive mark-making tools, such as Oil Brush, Soft Charcoal, and 2B Pencil.
These presets often initially satisfy the mark-making demands of the user. However, at some point, many users will want to create their own mark-making tools. It is therefore desirable to provide a system that allows users to easily create new mark-making tools without requiring extensive learning exercises.